A young research group in nuclear astrophysics at Darmstadt
Technische Hochschule ignited a European renaissance in that field.
Many of today's leaders of European science were in this Darmstadt
group, which invited Donald Clayton to visit them in May 1977.
Clayton's invited talk, "Dust to Dust: a Controversy on the Origin of
the Solar System", described new nuclear-astrophysical applications
that might be possible from surviving presolar dust in the solar
system. Pictured here on May 29 in Darmstadt are Eberhard Hilf, Michael
Pabst, Mounib El Eid, Ewald Mueller, Marcel Arnould, Clayton, Wolfgang
Hillebrandt and Koji Takahashi. Few other photographs capture so many
that were to set the future of nuclear astrophysics in Europe at a
moment of its rebirth. Hilf, whose mass law set new standards for
r-process calculations, had experienced a postdoc at Yeshiva
University with A. G. W. Cameron, who ignited Hilf's interests in
nuclear astrophysics; and Hilf brought that torch back to Darmstadt and
infected the others. When Hillebrandt left to build this research field
at Max Planck Institut fuer Astrophysik in Munich, going with him were
Ewald Mueller and Friedl Thielemann (who snapped this photo with
Clayton's camera). Clayton was during 1977 resident in Heidelberg as
Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist. Two decades later El Eid, who
was in 1977 a student of Hilf's, would be an important factor in nuclear
astrophysics at Clemson University through his annual visits that
initiated stellar evolution at Clemson University with his code.